Bernhard von Bulow

This fact lays on us - so long as the maintenance of good relations with Russia seems to us worth an effort - the duty of satisfying Russia that she has no need to fear any invasion of her sphere of interests on Germany's part.

Mr. Chamberlain desires to avert the threat to England's peace by making England, in alliance with Germany, stronger than her rivals and so to force them to renounce their hostile intentions against her.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.